The establishment of a collaborative surveillance program with indigenous hunters to characterize primate health in Southern Guyana

The consumption of primates is integral to the traditional subsistence strategies of many Indigenous communities throughout Amazonia. Understanding the overall health of primates harvested for food in the region is critical to Indigenous food security and thus, these communities are highly invested in long-term primate population health. Here, we describe the establishment of a surveillance comanagement program among the Waiwai, an Indigenous community in the Konashen Amerindian Protected Area (KAPA). To assess primate health in the KAPA, hunters performed field necropsies on primates harvested for food and tissues collected from these individuals were analyzed using histopathology. From 2015 to 2019, hunters conducted 127 necropsies across seven species of primates. Of this sample, 82 primates (between 2015 and 2017) were submitted for histopathological screening. Our histopathology data revealed that KAPA primates had little evidence of underlying disease. Of the tissue abnormalities observed, the majority were either due to diet (e.g., hepatocellular pigment), degenerative changes resulting from aging (e.g., interstitial nephritis, myocyte lipofusion), or nonspecific responses to antigenic stimulation (renal and splenic lymphoid hyperplasia). In our sample, 7.32% of individuals had abnormalities that were consistent with a viral etiology, including myocarditis and hepatitis. Internal parasites were observed in 53.66% of individuals and is consistent with what would be expected from a free-ranging primate population. This study represents the importance of baseline data for long-term monitoring of primate populations hunted for food. More broadly, this research begins to close a critical gap in zoonotic disease risk related to primate harvesting in Amazonia, while also demonstrating the benefits of partnering with Indigenous hunters and leveraging hunting practices in disease surveillance and primate population health assessment. Picture from a workshop conducted with Waiwai parabiologists (Left to right: Suse, Marawanaru, Shoni) and veterinarian (Milstein) to develop culturally appropriate sampling methodology. Parabiologists shared their thoughts on which tissues they could feasibly collect in ways that would not interfere with normal hunting and butchery practices. Here, the team is co-creating Waiwai language codes for hunter harvested primates to ensure tissues are identified correctly from harvest to data analysis. image Primate subsistence hunting is integral to the food security of Indigenous communities throughout the tropical world, and these communities are invested in long-term primate population health. We established a hunter-based disease surveillance comanagement program to monitor the health of primates living in the Konashen Amerindian Protected Area, Southern Guyana. Our research demonstrates the importance of partnering with Indigenous hunters and leveraging hunting practices in disease surveillance and primate population health assessment.